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November 19, 2007

A correction

Well, first of all, an apology to Mark
Cuban is required. I wrote in a blog item on Sunday that I was shocked he was
unaware of the rules governing the All-Star ballot and as it turns out, I had
them wrong, too.

Cuban has been critical of the fact that Devin Harris is not on the ballot. The
point that I made was that Harris was left off because the NBA imposes a limit
of five players per team.

As it turns out, that is incorrect, so that blog item has been blown up and
this is the correct information. The limit is six players, therefore, it was
possible for Harris to be included on the ballot.

That, however, would have still required a
player from another team to be taken off the ballot but I was wrong to say that
rules limited the number of Mavericks on the team to five, and for that, Mark,
I do apologize.

The major points I made, however, are still
the same. First, if you vote online, you will find it easy to write in a name
any player in the league. So if you want to
vote for Devin Harris or any other Maverick, it’s simple.

Second, we’re talking about a ballot with
120 players with only 10 in the starting lineup.

Third, the league needs to do something
about the requirement to have 12 centers from each conference listed because
one reason Harris was not listed is that 12 centers from the Western Conference
had to be included on the ballot and there aren’t 12 All-Star caliber centers
in the entire league.

Because of that rule, the All-Star
committee moved Tim Duncan from forward to center this year, and he has no
chance to start the All-Star game because of the presence of Yao Ming, who gets
massive support from basketball fans in China

.The solution for that would be to divide
players into frontcourt and backcourt positions and the NBA should consider
that for the future.

The craziest thing, as I noted in the
original blog item, is that – to paraphrase Allen Iverson – “We’re talking
about a BALLOT! Not the All-Star game, but the BALLOT!”